SHE WOULD DARE ANYTHING TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM HIS RULE.EVEN HIS BED.He ascended from the darkness years ago—Azrael the Eternal, Azrael the Undying, Azrael Who Is Death—bringing with him the black rains, the fires, the souring of the sky, and the Eaters. Now he rules in the walled city of Haven with his favored Children and his dead court, while all that is left of the living struggles to survive … struggles to survive in the ruins of a world that used to be their own. But even as extinction looms, humanity will never surrender to their monstrous conqueror.
For Lan, this brutal life has been the only one she’s ever known, but she still believes it can change. If the war can never truly end until the Eaters are ended, she will go to Haven, to Azrael himself, and demand he end them. To her surprise, she does not immediately die the hero’s death she expected. Instead, Azrael offers her a chance to convince him, and all she has to do is submit herself to the chill embrace of the lord of the Land of the Beautiful Dead.
From the author of The Scholomance and The Last Hour of Gann comes a new vision of erotic horror! This book contains explicit sex and gore and is intended for mature readers only.
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This book. One moment I couldn’t stop reading. The next I thought about giving up on it but something just kept me turning the pages. Then near the end of the book I’m a sobbing wreck. I was going to rate it three stars, because although the writing was delicious I felt the story wasn’t really going anywhere, until the emotional stuff beat me over the head lol. If you love slow burn romances that are seriously different and you want to be invested for a lengthy amount of time, then I highly recommend this one for you. The ending was just soooo good!
Second book read by this author.
After 15 hours of solid reading I’m trying to decompressed. Summing up all the emotions I feel is hard right now but if I don’t review now I will struggle later.
The full and complete world building that in this book is desolate and dark, distinctly lacking in hope and future. So I am left stunned finding myself in this world witnessing ( yes witnessing because the author is a highly skilled wordsmith that has left images ticketing over my brain like and old time cinema reel ) such a raw and honest, hopefilled romance between lan and azreal?? Stunned I say
Filled with one or two WTF!!! moments…if you’ve read this book you will know what I’m talking about!! Curse you chapter 22!!! I was warned but I still went there!!
I adored wickham, I think he and Lan were my favourite charachters. Their interactions were written so brilliantly and I have to say Lan was one of the best and worse heroines in a book I’ve read in a long time…best because of her bite and charachter and the depth of her soul to see beyond more than what’s on the outside of a person… worst in her choices ( I’m talking to you chapter 22) she was blind to the outside world, that was cruel and harsh ( and knowing this through her own experiences ) still put it before her own wants and Azreal’s.
The scope and range of the characters left me stunned and at times laughing out loud with pure unadulterated happiness, but also ugly crying worse than Kim kardashian. Yeah this is a rollercoaster of feels book.
I’ve come away from this book picturing an empty abandoned haven, waiting for its new occupants…if there will be any? Only the author knows but in my own head the story goes and on there will be new inhabitants, better…wiser choosing…than the ones who were there before…living or dead. I have hope for Lan and Azreal and their future on maya.
Land of the Beautiful Dead is an epic horror tale of a post-apocalyptic Earth where the dead, don’t stay dead. Land of the Beautiful Dead is not just a zombie horror tale. The Eaters are given a new perspective to us readers by making us relate to their survivors. These are not just mindless, dead, eating machines, they are our beloved dead. They are our mothers, fathers, sons and daughters and that relationship is the true horror that runs through every element of R Lee Smith’s tale.
What happens when our beloved dead, do not stay dead? How do we cope with death when our rituals are stripped from us? Lanachee, Lan for short, loses her mother to a violent death. Lan only knows this because people in her world don’t stay dead, they rise up again as mindless eaters. Losing her mother to murder was hard enough but having to break her back and burn her on a pyre brings Lan to new depths of horror. Lan decides then and there she will travel to Haven and ask the Lord of the Dead, Azrael, to end the eaters. Lan’s journey brings us through a hellscape of inbred villages, prostitution as a necessary means of commerce, and a land stripped bare of any human decency, or any decency at all. When she finally arrives in Haven, she has to sneak into the Palace where she is discovered and brought before Azrael. She quickly discovers that her lack of education and manners, two things that were the first to collapse under Ariel’s rule, have left her woefully unprepared to face The Lord of the Dead.
Land of the Beautiful Dead does not follow any typical book tropes. Lan is not some spunky, defiant protagonist whose sassiness and bravery win the day. She is a very flawed, extraordinarily complex and human character. Lan’s point of view throughout the book undergoes a gradual change as she interacts with Azrael and her tutor Mr. Wickham. Lan never loses the core of who she is as a person, but rather R. Lee Smith manages to build her character’s complexity over the course of Lan’s “lessons”. Showing a very real to life awakening of consciousness and awareness of a bigger world and her place in it. While Lan is being changed by Azrael and his court of Beautiful Dead people, Azrael is being changed by Lan. Lan shows Azrael that life outside of Haven has become a horror unimaginable. His eaters are a punishment so horrific that human civilization has not just collapsed but ground to a halt. The very accomplishments that he seeks to preserve in Haven have fallen to myth and legend outside of Haven’s walls. Only the old people even remember what electric light was and Lan’s own mother was a child when the world fell.
Through the hellscape of post-apocalyptic Earth Lan teaches Azrael empathy for the living and comes to understand death in all its many forms. The death of ideas, the death of the mind, the soul, and the body. The Land of the Beautiful Dead is a poignant and beautifully heartbreaking tale of life, death, and all the moments that make both worth it.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Every moment between the characters in this story felt genuine and real. I laughed out loud and cried real tears throughout this story. Lan and all the characters in ‘Land of the Beautiful Dead’ felt like real people. Seraphina, the spiteful handmaiden, became one of my favorite frenemy relationships in the book. Lan and Seraphina play off each other so well that it felt like a genuine connection between the two. I very much looked forward to their moments of spiteful dialogue. Their friendship is prickly and built on a foundation of dislike and yet Lan is loyal to Seraphina and their strange friendship.
Mr. Wickham fast became one of my favorite characters in this book. His wisdom and insight into Lan is our guide through Lan’s character development. Through Mr. Wickham we get to see Lan’s gradual shift from antagonist to acceptance and of course his love of architecture is one of the best running jokes throughout the book.
Everyone in Haven from the Steward to Mr. Wickham brings color, vibrancy, and complexity to R Lee Smith’s tale of life, death and all the moments in between.
PussnBooks.net REVIEWING THE DARKEST, MOST EROTIC AND TAOOO BOOKS WE CAN FIND
Ooft! I have yet to read anything that Ms Smith has written that is not 110% amazing.
Seriously.
Every book of hers that I read I get lost in pretty much immediately and I never quite find myself the same person when I come back out of it.
This one was no different. I felt everything as if it was my life she was creating with her words.
LAN
This is one awesome young woman. I would say “lady” but that, she is not, lol.
Having been born after Azrael’s ascension, she has only ever known this dark and dreadful world with zombies and starvation. Death and destruction.
After her mum passes away (horribly I might add) she decides to face the devil head-on and in person.
From the first moment that they actually speak to eachother…shit gets real.
She is a spitfire, lol. Stubborn and opinionated and she doesn’t know how to be any other way.
She had me in fits of giggles as well as tears.
Under no circumstances are you to butter your entire roll and, my God!” she cried suddenly, switching Lan’s hand three times in rapid succession. “Never lick your knife!” “Ouch! Fine! Buggering fuck! Leave off with that beshitted thing!” The dead woman let out a sound like the chirping of a bird, staring at her with an indignation that was nearly horror. “Ladies,” she sputtered at last. “Ladies do not say bugger or fuck!” “But beshitted’s all right?” Lan asked cautiously. “No, it is not!” “You know, I may not be as mannered-up as you are, but in Norwood, it’s rude to yell at the table.” The dead woman actually hung her mouth open for a second or two before snapping it shut.
AZRAEL
Where the hell do I start with this guy?
He is called many things. A god. The Devil. Evil.
But he is so much more complicated than that. He is rough and raw. A tortured soul, and everything you could not imagine by just looking at him and listening to what he says.
The things he keeps inside. Dude.
How does R Lee Smith manage to et me to fall in love with the man who killed billions of humans?
He has…depth…oh for fuck’s sake. I can’t do this justice!
“How are you beautiful? You are…two unflinching eyes and the chin where you carry all your stubbornness. You are the blush you never admit to and that rebel lock of hair you are forever pushing back. You are the throat that arches and the lower lip you bite to keep from moaning…just before you moan anyway. You are my Lan and you are radiant.
SEX SCENES
Again I will say that although the sex between these two was fierce and passionate, this book is not about the sex.
Her first movements were self-conscious, unsure of what he wanted or was feeling, but she knew what she wanted and in the absence of command, she took it. What began with caution soon gave way to something violent, that was nearly an attack. She rode him, graceless, bucking and clawing at his chest for leverage, her eyes squeezed shut against the distraction of sight. His body was awful, but it gave her what she wanted and hers took it in with single-minded, animal need.
FINAL THOUGHTS on LAND OF THE BEAUTIFUL DEAD by R. Lee Smith
This book was so freakin’ deep and dark. Beautiful and ugly. It was more than simply “emotional” and I still haven’t managed to wrap my head around these characters.
I’m still absorbing the book, even now.
I feel I could read this book 100 times and still feel and discover something new every time.
5 Stars
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THIS AUTHOR. SHE IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES AND, I HAVE READ ALL HER BOOKS. SHE IS GREAT AT BUILDING WORLDS. AND, MAKES ME FALL IN LOVE WITH THE MOST UNEXPECTED PEOPLE. WHEN I FIRST START READING, I THINK, WHAT A JERK. BUT, BY THE END, I THINK, I WOULD LOVE TO DISAPPEAR WITH HIM FOREVER.
This book was amazing. The prose, the pace, the characters, they were PERFECT. R. Lee. Smith is ruining me for other authors.
I cried, I laughed, then I cried some more, and then I was like “DON’T YOU EFFING DARE DO THIS TO ME, AUTHOR” and then I cried some more, because this book was too much, so much, and it was perfect.